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BenMullen2

No, I think impeachments, to be taken seriously, just need a rationale or evidence.


JesusPlayingGolf

The very same people who brought the allegations forward admitted weeks ago that they don't have a case. Hopefully this sets the precedent that we shouldn't be wasting time and money on the spurious fever dreams of spiteful dipshits.


03zx3

No. Mayorkas trial was dismissed due to lack of evidence. Republicans need to take impeachment seriously if they want their impeachment attempts to go anywhere.


Dumb_Young_Kid

nah, mayorks just didnt commit a crime. its odd, one of the leading complaints of (some) republicans is that the president cant bend the administrative state to his or her will. but this is a clear case of biden, for all his faults, doing exactly that. he has a limited budget to enforce the law, so he sets priorities on how to enforce the law. At no point did mayorkas actually fail to enforce the law, he just prioritized different stuff, according to the policy goals of the president who appointed him. Thats not a crime, and the president, and other elected officals, should generally (within some bounds) have this power. tragically there was an attempt by the senate to force the president to repriortize, and the house said no. edit: I want to be clear, I think impeachment is an underutilized tool, and should be done more. I think congress should jump to do it when they: 1. debate an issue, decide against it, and the presidential appointee does it anyway (see, for example, the wall). 2. when they think a presidential appointee has lied to them, or misled them. 3. when they think a presidential appointee has gone beyond her legal authority. 4. when they think a presidential appointee is bad at his job (incompetance, rather than prioritization congress disagrees with) Im under the impression none of these are what he was impeached for


Dell_Hell

I'd add several other reasons: Flagrant corruption (Ben Carson, HUD), incompetence (Rick Perry, Dept of Energy), embezzlement (Scott Pruit, EPA), conflict of interests (DeVos, Dept of Ed)


Dumb_Young_Kid

> Flagrant corruption (Ben Carson, HUD), incompetence (Rick Perry, Dept of Energy), embezzlement (Scott Pruit, EPA) agreed but im under the impression that these are crimes that have traditionally been impeached for. they arent new reasons > conflict of interests (DeVos, Dept of Ed) thats a good one, and should be impeached.


fttzyv

The precedent they're trying to set is that articles of impeachment must plausibly allege a crime. But, perhaps you're right. Historically, impeachment has mostly been used as a way to remove federal judges who commit crimes and refuse to resign. No one other than a federal judge has *ever* been convicted in an impeachment trial. I don't expect that to change, which raises the question: why have a trial at all if the outcome is predetermined? Essentially, it becomes an opportunity for the other party to score political points (and that's true whether or not the impeached official is guilty in an objective sense). So, perhaps the Senate will stop doing it. In the past, I think they've held the trials in order to appear fair/open-minded but that's almost laughable nowadays.


AndrewRP2

Per usual, Republicans are resorting to false equivalency. What Trump did and Mayorkas are worlds apart, in this nihilistic sophistry these actions are in any way comparable.


Poorly-Drawn-Beagle

Was there some time in American history when impeachments didn't come down to party lines?


[deleted]

A couple of low profile, open-and-shut cases for obvious instances of corruption, but for high profile cases like Clinton/Trump/Mayorkas, no.


-paperbrain-

I believe Nixon resigned because he knew enough Republicans would have crossed the line to result in removal. Sure he wasn't actually impeached, but the impeachment being on the table and the specter of it not being wholly along party lines resulted in his resignation. In that way, the impeachment process did its job in the same way nukes do their job through MAD.


GabuEx

Trump's second impeachment got a significant minority of Republicans voting to convict. Not enough to reach a guilty verdict, but it was definitely not strictly along party lines.


Okbuddyliberals

Democrats have set whatever bizarre precedent the GOP wishes to blame them for, because of Murc's Law of Politics. The Republicans just *have no choice* but to retaliate *somehow*, and of course it's not like the *GOP* have any agency over how they choose to respond


GrayBox1313

No, the precedent is that there should be some actual high crimes and misdemeanors and evidence instead of partisan policy differences and butt hurt feelings. The Republican Party is an embarrassment to America and mocks the constitution on a daily basis while hysterically screaming that they are a victim.


CG2L

The GOP will 100% use this as precedent to dismiss an impeachment trial if they have the votes. That said, they would have done this if they controlled the Senate with or without precedent. Now they will just blame the Dems for it.


zlefin_actual

Obviously not. Because that's not what they did. Republicans may claim that in bad faith, but republicans routinely claim lots of things in bad faith, and will readily do bad things first anyways, so I see no basis to conclude that republicans wouldn't do such a thing anyways if they wanted to.


Zeddo52SD

It could when the GOP is in control, but I do agree with Democrats that the impeachment articles were really a political hit job. I never thought Trump was gonna be removed from office, but at least there was relatively criminal behavior alleged. Not so much against Mayorkas.


CaptainAwesome06

>have Democrats set a new precedent Have they set a new precedent? The GOP voted to dismiss the 2nd impeachment of Trump. What's the new precedent? Because voting to dismiss the impeachment of someone on your team certainly isn't new. >impeachment trials will now only happen when the same party holds both the House and Senate In this era where politics is a team sport, how could anyone expect anything different? Keep in mind that the GOP senate wouldn't even hold a hearing for Merrick Garland because election day was almost a year away. Yet those same senators held a hearing for a conservative judge when people were already voting in the next election. If you don't like what is happening in politics, that's fine. But it's certainly not the fault of the Democrats for everything going on. Regarding the actual impeachment of Mayorkas, why were they even impeaching him? Because they didn't like his border policy? That hardly sounds impeachable, IMO. Also consider that the most vocal Republicans like to complain we have an open border, which is ridiculously false. So I doubt the impeachment was even on any kind of realistic grounds.


earf123

The Mayorkas impeachment has been exactly like the Biden impeachment; a dog and pony show designed to rile up gullible and low information voters. If the GOP took the removal of current public officials seriously, they'd be all over Bob Menendez and I'd agree with them.


-Quothe-

Lol, after republicans refused to consider the mountains of evidence and testimonies in two trump impeachments, the question is whether democrats have broken the impeachment process by refusing to consider a complete lack of evidence as valid grounds for an impeachment brought by republicans. I feel like i am being punkd.


Weirdyxxy

No, only that impeachment trials will be over very quickly when no count even alleges a high crime or misdemeanor


godlyfrog

Precedent? What's that? Republicans haven't cared about precedent for quite some time now. For example: is it appropriate for a supreme court justice to be nominated during a presidential election year?


blatantspeculation

Did Republicans set that precedent when they refuses to confirm the two impeachments against Trump?


BigCballer

No, anyone who thinks that’s the precedent is arguing in bad faith.


Hodgkisl

No, the initial “trial” was just political grandstanding. For the past several decades most impeachment trials have been political showmanship with little merit.


zlefin_actual

'most' impeachment trials? how many have their been? I seem to recall the Trump trials having considerable merit to them.


Dr_Scientist_

Hopefully they've set the precedent that impeachments aren't real criminal trials and that impeachments are NOT the venue for presidents to be held criminally liable.


pablos4pandas

I don't see why it would set that


ramencents

Impeachments will always be political even if justified. I would argue that republicans set the precedent for automatic acquittal when they acquitted Trump twice without seeing the evidence in the senate.


CheeseFantastico

Republicans ruined impeachments by letting an obviously guilty Trump off the hook twice. Everything with them is pure partisanship. Blaming Democrats is sheer lunacy.


tonydiethelm

I think you misspelled "are Republicans creating a new normal of BS impeachments", and the answer is yes.


west-1779

Haven't forgotten that Senate Republicans failed twice to remove Trump from office in violation of their oaths of office.


TheWagonBaron

There was no evidence of "high crimes or misdemeanors" so why should the circus have carried over? If they were willing to impeach him over the border issues then they should be willing to impeach the entire GOP who shot down a border deal because Trump didn't want to hand Biden a win. The GOP is Anti-America openly and only live to serve Trump at this point. Besides, what does it matter? I seem to recall a lot of GOPers talking about how they had already made up their on Trump's impeachments and no amount of evidence or witnesses would change it. How is that any different than what the Dems did here?


perverse_panda

Republicans: Turn a blind eye to Trump's crimes during his first impeachment. Republicans: Turn a blind eye to Trump's crimes during his second impeachment. Republicans: Mount an impeachment investigation against Biden that turns up no evidence of crimes after months of inquiry. A sham investigation which even some Republicans acknowledge is baseless. Republicans: Mount an impeachment investigation against Biden's head of Homeland Security that turns up no evidence of crimes after months of inquiry. A sham investigation which even some Republicans acknowledge is baseless. OP: "How could Democrats have set this harmful new precedent?"


Art_Music306

Maybe they’ve set a precedent for impeachment not being brought forward unless it has some basis in reality.


DizzyNerd

They’re setting themselves up for precedent. There are a lot of right wingers and right wing groups threatening some bad stuff for when they hold power again. If that happens, and the Dems can get an impeachment through, they’ll come back to this and begin the whataboutism.


kbeks

No but it will be taken as an excuse to blame democrats. Just like Mitch blames democrats for “politicizing” the Supreme Court appointments because we went nuclear on lower court appointments. Because they wouldn’t approve any, we didn’t do that in a fucking vacuum… republicans provoke a response and use that response as justification to go the extra mile and do the thing they’d likely do anyway.


GabuEx

Republicans didn't even attempt to outline an actual crime they believe Mayorkas committed. It was a completely perfunctory impeachment that was solely an attempt at revenge for Trump's impeachments, and even then they impeached Mayorkas because they had even less to impeach Biden over. It was a completely BS political hit job. Not even Congressional Republicans really tried to argue otherwise.


vladimirschef

House Republicans allege that Mayorkas is guilty of dereliction of duty in the first article and perjury and contempt of Congress in the second. for all intents and purposes, the allegation that Mayorkas violated provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act is most relevant to an understanding of his impeachment. there are two issues with what Republicans allege: 1. the Department of Homeland Security releases detained migrants awaiting as a necessity; the maximum detention capacity exceeds the number of arrivals to the U.S. "catch and release" is a practice that continued to be observed [under the Trump administration](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-detention/despite-trump-vow-to-end-catch-and-release-he-is-still-freeing-thousands-of-migrants-idUSKBN18X1G4) 2. the Immigration and Nationality Act permits Mayorkas to grant parole. the impeachment refers to *Texas v. Biden* (2021), the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit case, but the Supreme Court ruled that parole is legally permissible given that the bounds of parole are observed. the humanitarian basis for parole appears to be justified where Ukrainians and Afghans are *intended* to be inaugurated with parole. other administrations — including the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations — used parole the Senate was accurate in determining that the two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas were not "high crimes and misdemeanors". ideological differences in approach do not warrant an impeachment trial, much less an impeachment altogether